Intelligence sources in Syria and Lebanon said Friday that Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah strongly suspects that US and Russian special forces assassinated Mustafa Bader Al-din, the commander of Hizballah forces in Syria, in a joint operation-despite the public allegation against amorphous rebels.

Arab media reports that on the early morning of Friday May 13th, Hezbbolah’s chief commander in Lebanon Mustafa Bader Al-din was killed. Al-din is a relative of Hezbbolah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.

The US, Russia and the Syrian rebels started discussions this weekend over the composition of a list of Syrian generals who will be removed over war crimes they committed during the country’s civil war, debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report exclusively. :

The chief of staff of the Iranian military, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, arrived in Damascus on April 30 to assume direct command of the Iranian and Hizballah forces fighting in Syria, debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report. His arrival shifts Iran intervention in Syria into high gear.

Israel has started testing a secret new weapon for defeating the tunnel systems, which the Palestinian Hamas and Hizballah are busy digging for surprise attacks against Israel. Western sources reported Friday, March 11, that the new weapon, dubbed the “Underground Iron Dome,” can detect a tunnel, then send in a moving missile to blow it up.

The Syrian town of Zabadani is the site of Hizballah’s new secret program for the development of chemical weapons and dirty bombs, debkafile reveals. Syrian and Iranian engineers and technicians are developing the chemical weapons and foreign experts were hired from outside the Middle East to help build radioactive weapons.

Israel’s leaders are clinging to lame locutions – “good judgment and responsibility” - to avoid military action for dealing with the crisis situations fast coming to a head on three extremely dangerous fronts: armed Palestinian terrorists are now tying up traffic on a major highway to the Israeli capital; southern Syria is sliding into the control of Hizballah after this Iranian proxy was permitted to amass 100,000 missiles in S. Lebanon; and, this week, Israelis living near the Gaza Strip could hear Palestinians building terror tunnels under their homes.

Mahmoud Abbas is dancing for the first time with Hizballah. He has taken up the proposal to set up militias in Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps, partly modeled on the deal he is discussing with the Israeli government for militias in Jerusalem’s Palestinian suburbs and camps.

On Wednesday, Jan. 27 a large Hizballah force entered the southern Syrian town of Daraa, a critically dangerous event for Israel’s security. The way to the town, which lies near the Jordanian border and across from the Israeli Golan, was opened before Hizballah by none other than Russian forces. This was a blatant violation of President Vladimir Putin’s commitments to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Jordanian King Abdullah, not to permit Iranian and Iran-backed forces reach their borders in consequence of Russia’s military intervention in the Syria war.

Israel’s Chief of Staff complains that the strategic intelligence supplied by IDF MI is not good enough for coping with ISIS. He fears that a tactical ISIS attack may blow up into a strategic problem without warning.

Not only did the Saudis execute the prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr as a terrorist, but they put him to death together with Sunni terrorists, an unpardonable act which enraged Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to the point of threatening the Saudi royal family with “divine revenge.” Tehran also noted Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reference to Sunni and Shiite terrorist threats alike besetting Israel, and inferred that a counter-Tehran alliance may be in the making between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and possibly Turkey too.

Police spokesman admitted Friday night that their investigation was still wide open. debkafile: Aside from the Koran clue, there are two pointers: ISIS Thursday posted a Twitter message in fractured Hebrew warning “Tomorrow there will be an attack on Dizengoff St,” and at the Palestinian Ain Hilwa refugee camp in Lebanon, the attack had its first response in celebratory gunfire and jubilation. Jihadist organizations linked to the Islamic State have taken over much of the camp. An Israeli Arab has meanwhile identified his son as the shooter.

The IDF and the armies involved in the Syrian war - Russia, Syria and Iran – were on war alert Thursday, Dec. 31 for an imminent Hizballah attack on Israel in revenge for the Samir Quntar assassination in Damascus on Dec. 20. All their intelligence agencies agreed that there was no stopping Hizballah. A senior German emissary was in Beirut two days ago to try and hold Hassan Nasrallah back. He failed. Russian and Iranian forces in Syria are now braced for a potential Israeli counter-offensive.

Since the assassination of Samir Quntar Sunday, the IDF has notched up the alert level on the Golan, the Lebanese and Syrian borders and the main roads of northern Israel, in view of signs that Iranian leaders are bent on avenging not only his death, but that of his two secret Iranian controllers, who are now revealed by debkafile to have been with him at the time. Iran’s political and military elite have concluded that the rockets which struck their agent in Damascus were aimed more at Tehran than at Hizballah.